Tuesday, December 17th, 8:30 PM at Sala 500
For almost thirty years, he has enchanted audiences worldwide with his boundless and multifaceted talent, poised between virtuoso form and jazz improvisation. Described as a “genius” by Le Figaro, he has made a name for himself thanks to his eccentric interpretation of the classics and his rare sensitivity to every genre. Turkish pianist and composer Fazıl Say is the protagonist of the concert that on Tuesday, December 17th, at 8:30 PM, marks the beginning of the new Pianisti del Lingotto Series at Sala 500. Already a guest at the Concerti del Lingotto Series in 2005 with Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue alongside the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Yuri Temirkanov, Say inaugurates the cycle that, starting this season, Lingotto Musica dedicates to the piano and its literature from the Baroque to the contemporary period. In his recital on the border between jazz, romantic piano, and folklore, Say tackles Schubert’s last Sonata, Mozart’s KV 331 with its famous Turkish Rondo, and a work of his own born during the pandemic, Yeni hayat (New Life).
The dizzying Turkish pianist and composer in recital
Fazıl Say (born 1970) received his first lessons from Mithat Fenmen, a student of Alfred Cortot in Paris. Sensing the boy’s talent, Fenmen made him improvise at the keyboard every day before tackling his regular exercises. This early exposure to free creative processes and forms is considered the source of Say’s improvisational genius and aesthetic vision. In 1986, the composer Aribert Reimann had the opportunity to hear him during a visit to Ankara and urged his accompanist, the pianist David Levine, to do the same, saying, “You have to hear him, this boy plays like the devil.” From 1987, Say perfected his classical piano training with Levine, first in Düsseldorf and then in Berlin. As a composer, he has written works commissioned by, among others, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and BBC, Salzburg Festival, WDR, Munich Philharmonic, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Vienna Konzerthaus, Dresden Philharmonic, and Fondation Louis Vuitton. His catalogue includes five symphonies, two oratorios, various solo concertos, and works for piano and chamber music. After winning the International “Young Concert Artists” Competition in New York in 1994, he has performed with the most renowned orchestras and conductors. In chamber music, he has collaborated with Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Maxim Vengerov, Minetti Quartet, Nicolas Altstaedt, and Marianne Crebassa. His recordings of his own works and those of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, and Gershwin have won numerous awards, including four ECHO Klassik and a Gramophone Award. Already an artist in residence at numerous prestigious halls, orchestras, and festivals, he received the Rheingau Music Prize in 2013, the International Beethoven Prize in Bonn in 2016, and the Music Prize of the City of Duisburg in 2017. An avowed atheist disliked by radical Islamists, he has repeatedly spoken out in defense of freedom of expression and was even convicted of insulting religion on Twitter (a conviction later overturned) in 2013 by the Turkish government.
Alongside Schubert’s final sonata and Mozart’s KV 331 with its famous Turkish Rondo, a personal work created during the pandemic
The program opens with Franz Schubert’s Sonata No. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960, the last of three sonatas composed by the author in September 1828, just a few weeks before his death. The first performance was held privately in Vienna, exactly one day after the completion of the score: Schubert himself performed it at a musical evening at the home of Dr. Ignaz Menz. Filled with endless lyricism and expansive in its proportions, it is considered a kind of spiritual testament of the composer. This is followed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s youthful Sonata No. 11 in A major, KV 331, which became famous thanks to the spectacular Turkish Rondo, a lively reaction to the fashion of “turquerie” widespread throughout Europe at the end of the 18th century. This piece is included in the monumental complete cycle of Mozart’s Piano Sonatas recorded by Say at the Mozarteum in Salzburg in 2016 for Warner Classics. The evening concludes with the Sonata op. 99 Yeni Hayat (New Life) composed by Fazıl Say for his first post-pandemic concert in July 2021. Characterized by great timbral experimentation, the piece expresses the mixture of uncertainty, anxiety, and hope that followed that tragic global experience.